Facebook to organize friends in 'smart lists'

NEW YORK -- Facebook will start organizing users' friends into smaller groups to make it easier to share photos, posts and links.

Facebook has long allowed users to group their friends into categories. But most people have not used those capabilities.

Beginning Wednesday, Facebook will automatically group many of your friends based on whether they live near you, went to your school or work with you. Then, you can read posts or share updates with specific groups instead of dozens, or hundreds, of "friends" at a time. Called "smart lists," the feature is optional to use.

You can also create your own groups. For example, you can list a dozen or so "close friends" and see more of their updates than those in your list of "acquaintances."